adventures in motoring...

What is it with cars? Getting to a certain age and then loads of stuff conking out at once. Ours has cost us a good bit of money this year already, but Lucy the Multipla really took the biscuit coming home from the Harrogate Nursery Fair that I've blogged on my business blog already. She'd been doing odd things for a few days but nothing that our local mechanic could suss out, so we set off as usual. The draggy-whooshy noise was there on the way but wasn't really giving me any problems as such. We got there, we trawled round, we chatted... I missed my Costa coffee! Was going to get one to drive home with but we stayed so long they closed the catering stands!

Got out, went 'oh crap look at the time!' Kirsty (of FrontBackandSides) rang up to say that we were just setting off and got a 'what??!!' type response... think we all thought we wouldn't be still there at 6.15! Paid for parking, ugh, set off home. Got to Pool and the dratted car wouldn't go into gear. On a mini-roundabout. Hmmm....

Cue more phonecalling, what's the number for the breakdown co, not sure how long we'll be, all that. But the clutch pedal released, and it seemed to be working fine, so we set off again. And all was well. Until we got to a traffic lights halfway up a long long hill... And then we had smoke! I have never seen Kirsty move as fast, grabbing her bags, my bag and her blagged DreamGenii pillow (seriously, jammy bugger!) and jumping out of the car. I was less worried as it smelled of something stuck rather than actual fire, iykwim. But I did put the hazard lights on, grab my phone and jump out. Much to the disgust of my fellow drivers! As if I'd chosen to break down! Am I not deserving more of sympathy than revulsion?? Whatever...

So after getting the location of the car through to the breakdown service operator (I'm at the junction of 2 A roads, I gave the numbers, how much more flaming specific do they want?? And no, the A660 doesn't run through Staffordshire as far as I know!) I said 'we're going to push the car into the pub carpark and wait inside.' And so, we went in the pub, found some helpful men, got the car smoothly into the car park and went and bought ourselves drinks. Offered drinks to said men but they demurred, bless them. And then talked about us as if we couldn't hear them. The Dyneley Arms does a very nice Sam Smiths Old Brewery Bitter though, and the two half-pints I had were well pulled too. But they stop serving food at 5pm on Sundays so Kirsty couldn't get herself a pudding.

The breakdown bloke turned up, eventually. We couldn't see the car park from where we were in the pub, and I didn't have any signal on my phone. So he was there for 10 minutes before actually coming in the pub to find us, apparently they're not allowed to go in pubs to find people! How ridiculous is that? And how come the control centre bloke didn't tell us? Grr!

So after a bumpy trip home, with a pregnant K and a me who forgot to go to the loo before setting off from the pub, we got back home. K had to get a taxi home from here because Jobsworth couldn't do the extra drop-off. A good day, with a lump at the end, I think!

So what's up with the car?? Well the local garage that we take it to for tyres and exhausts and stuff don't do gearbox-y stuff so it's gone to the people they take MOTs to, who think it was the clutch release bearing. £250 worth of parts and labour. Oh joy. Could have been much much worse I guess!